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INCUBUS :: A CROW LEFT OF THE MURDER << back l page 2
Good Mornings and Good-byes2001 proved to be a busy year for Incubus and during the earlier part of the year, with producer Scott Lit (Days Of The New, R.E.M.), who had already produced Make Yourself, the band rented out a mansion in Malibu to compose and record their 4th studio album.
In the summer, the band hit the road with Hundred Reasons in Europe followed by the Area One Festival which featured Moby and others, where they played some new songs that would be included in Morning View. In August, Incubus got to play their first shows in Australia and Japan, before returning to the United States to do their long awaited headlining tour with long-time friends from California, Hoobastank.
On August, 2001, Incubus released their first single from their upcoming album, Morning View called “Wish You Were Here” which instantly began to climb up the charts and in early September was sitting at #2 and continued to sit among the top 10 on Billboards Modern Rock Charts for weeks for which the video also earned viewings on MTV's TRL, VH1, and Much Music.
Shortly after, on the 23rd of October of 2001, Incubus released their highly anticipated fourth album, Morning View. Named after the street where the mansion they recorded in was located, it debuted on the Billboard top 200 at the #2 spot, and remained on the Billboard Top 200 chart for weeks, selling 440,000 copies in its first week, the highest ever placement for Incubus. Morning View brought Incubus their most significant success to date, going platinum in just ten weeks since its release. Recorded in a mansion on the Malibu coast of California, the sound is generally seen as a reflection of that environment, as opposed to the basement where S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was recorded. The momentum steadily gained around Morning View and in 2002, the band was featured on MTV's “Becoming,” TRL, Jay Leno, and played on the Letterman show where they performed “Wish You Were Here.” Later on, to coincide with their fall headlining tour, Incubus issued a new version of the album which contained a DVD dubbed the "Morning After View Session" which featured the U.K. video for "Are You In?" some exclusive tour footage, new artwork, behind the scenes material and more. Before 2002 ended, Incubus released When Incubus Attacks Vol. 2, a DVD that featured several of their videos as well as live and backstage footage and more.
Other singles released from Morning View were “Nice To Know You,” “Are You In?” “Circles” and “Warning,” the video of which was shot when Incubus toured in Sydney, Australia in March that same year.
Incubus' last performance in 2002 (November 1st) brought several eras of the band to a close. Their last show of the tour would be the conclusion of the 2002 Morning View tour as the band looked on to playing new music. The show was also their last with founding member and bass player Alex "Dirk Lance" Katunich, whom the band parted ways with due to creative and personal differences.
Musicians, Charities and a Writer Dirk Lance was quietly replaced by former guitarist of the hip-hop group, the Roots, bassist Ben Kenney, who immediately began working with Mike Einziger on new songs for the Psychedelic Jazz Funk side project done together with Jose Pasillas named The Time Lapse Consortium. The laid back, jazz-funk stylings of the Time Lapse Consortium which included an eleven-piece orchestra held several live performances with Neal Evans of Soulive and Suzi Katayama, who has worked with Incubus in the past on orchestral arrangements like the one in Aqueous Transmission and 2000's "Almost Acoustic X-Mas" performance. During one performance, a special appearance was made by Brandon Boyd who joined the Time-Lapse Consortium for two tunes including "Certain Shade of Green."
2003 proved to be an eventful year for the band, starting off with a legal dispute with Sony records, which fortunately ended up well in April, with the band signing a new contract after a brief negotiation period, to the relief of fans everywhere. In mid 2003, after overcoming difficulties earlier in the year, Incubus shared the main stage of the newly-resurrected Lollapalooza – the premiere summer tour in the '90s that has served as the prototype for the modern-day music festival – with Jane's Addiction, Audioslave, The Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle, Jurassic 5, and The Donnas, the alt-rock-minded road show’s first outing since 1997. Three months later, the band released Live at Lollapalooza the first CD in the “Live for Life” series, which contained the new unreleased "Pistola," with proceeds going to Incubus’ Make Yourself Foundation, the band’s non-profit organization aimed at raising $1 million over the course of this year, to fund various causes and charities that are important to the band, both locally and around the world.
Though Mike Einziger, along with Scott Litt, Dave Holdredge, and Rick Will, lost the Grammy in the "Best Engineered Album (Non Classical)" category for their work on Morning View to the Norah Jones camp, the band shined again at the 2003 Bridge School Benefit where they debuted the song "Talk Shows on Mute" at this acoustic event. Organized by Neil Young, the 17th annual concert gathered numerous musicians to raise aide money for children with severe speech and physical impairments.
2003 also marked the debut of Brandon Boyd as an author and an artist. His first publication, White Fluffy Clouds is a 96-page art and inspirational book that features a collection of artworks, poetry, insights, reflections and ramblings, candid portraits and a general celebration of things interesting while the band was on the tour bus and performing on the road.
A Crow Left of the MurderSlated for its release on the 3rd of February 2003 under Sony/Epic Records, Incubus' fifth full-length album entitled, A Crow Left of the Murder was completed on November 14th of the previous year and was produced by the band and Brendan O'Brien. One of the premiere rock producers of the 90s, O’Brien’s distinctive touch, epitomized by guitars that push the needle into the red and a massive drum and bass sound, has helped propel albums by Pearl Jam, Korn, Stone Temple Pilots, Matthew Sweet, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine (just to name a few) to great success.
A more flamboyant and exploratory album compared to their previous ones, A Crow Left of the Murder – whose album title is makes reference to one crow apart from the rest of the murder (flock/group) – takes on a new experimental aspect to the band's sound as it features songs that are more energetic and fast, while at the same time, also reflects the laid-back vibe of the band.
The album’s first single, the fast-paced “Megalomaniac” has already been released last December, 2003 and has been racing up Billboard's rock airplay charts in advance of the 14-track set's release, debuting at #75 on the Hot 100 Singles Chart, #10 on the Modern Rock Chart, and #24 on the Mainstream Rock Chart in its first week. Just before Boyd and Einziger headed to Australia for the promo tour of the new album, Incubus finished filming the video for “Megalomaniac,” the first video from A Crow Left Of The Murder in Los Angeles, CA. which is quickly proving to be their most stimulating yet. Brilliantly directed by Floria Sigismondi who has directed videos for Bjork, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, and more recently has won acclaim for her work on several videos from the album by Sigur Rós including the MTV Europe Award for Video of the Year for Sigur Rós’s video "O," the new "Megalomaniac" video shows a new face of the band: a political one. Dark and very stylized, it features a lot of shots of the guys playing, as well as a lot of old news footage with evil leaders of the last 100 years or so, showing Incubus as a mature band with objectives and purposes in the current musical scene and possibly setting a tone for the album to come as it shows an unusually political side to the boys where previously their qualms were mostly social.
Notable tracks on A Crow Left of the Murder include “Beware! Criminal,” the band's evolutionary successor to "Nice to Know You" from 2001's Morning View, where Einziger’s jazzy tones are evident coupled by Boyd’s verses that surface as rapid-fired blasts; the bouncy “Pistola,” which features the same trademark catchiness and space-age aesthetic that put Incubus on the map; the laid-back and mellow “Talk Shows On Mute,” a slow-tempoed acoustic number accented by Kilmore's skittering restlessness and the album's last track, "Leech," which best showcases Kenney and Einziger's marriage as they weave their parts within the song so each alternately takes the fore while the other acts as a pedestal.
Since it's formation, Incubus always was a band in constant change. Sometimes the sound changed and sometimes, the band's line up changed and with a new album in the wings, 2004 promises to be an exciting year for both the band and their fans.
With Mike Einziger’s stronger sounding guitars acquiring a more encompassing style that overshadows anything he's done on the band's previous albums, Ben Kenney’s bass capable of controlling a song with his bass lines alone, DJ Chris Kilmore’s incorporation of tweaked-out atmospheres used to push Incubus beyond the limits of a standard four-piece rather than the scratching that sounds dated, Jose Pasilla’s suitable funk-inflected hard rock, high-end beats and Brandon Boyd’s reliance on what he has proven he does best, from singing verses that surface as rapid-fired blasts to drawn-out and emotional croons and sustained howls that sometimes drag out the band's songs, Incubus continues to push music to its limit and fans have more to anticipate than they originally expected with the upcoming February release of the band’s fifth studio album A Crow Left Of The Murder.
© Valerie V. Mayuga, 2005
Read Straight From the Incubus Presscon, here.
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